Fruit (literally or figuratively)
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H6529, peri, is a Hebrew noun for fruit or produce and can extend to offspring, the result of speech, and the outcome of conduct. Genesis first uses it for seed-bearing trees within God's good creation and for food given to creatures.
Reader summary
Full entry for פְּרִי (H6529) · Open the biblical lexicon
H6529, peri, is a Hebrew noun for fruit or produce and can extend to offspring, the result of speech, and the outcome of conduct. Genesis first uses it for seed-bearing trees within God's good creation and for food given to creatures.
The BSB source-word alignment has 119 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include the fruit (17), fruit (16), its fruit (12), their fruit (9), and the produce (5).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 1:11. Its strongest book concentrations include Deuteronomy (21), Ezekiel (11), Jeremiah (11), Psalms (11).
H6529, peri, is a Hebrew noun for fruit or produce and can extend to offspring, the result of speech, and the outcome of conduct. Genesis first uses it for seed-bearing trees within God's good creation and for food given to creatures. Deuteronomy applies the term to crops, livestock, and children within Israel's covenant blessings and curses. Wisdom and prophetic texts then speak of the fruit of lips, labor, righteousness, lies, and rooted life. The word links an outcome to what produced it without claiming that every circumstance reveals a simple moral cause.
Literal and figurative uses must remain distinct. A harvest can testify to land, labor, rain, and gift. Children can be called the fruit of the womb, yet Rachel's anguish and Jacob's answer in Genesis 30 show that fertility is not a human entitlement or a measure of spiritual worth. Deuteronomy's blessings and siege curses belong to Israel's covenant setting and cannot be turned into a promise that faithful people will always be wealthy, fertile, or physically secure. The horrifying siege language exposes covenant catastrophe; it never sanctions violence against children.
The metaphorical uses invite patient moral discernment. Psalms and Jeremiah portray trees that bear in season because they are rooted near water. Proverbs traces speech toward consequences, Isaiah names the fruit of deeds, and Hosea shows abundant fruit diverted toward idolatrous altars or a harvest of lies. Fruit can reveal direction over time, but a single hardship, disability, illness, miscarriage, or season of little visible result must not be labeled bad fruit. Pastoral application should examine patterns honestly while honoring grief, hidden faithfulness, created limits, and God's freedom to give growth.
H6529 moves from created fruit and food through covenant produce and offspring, firstfruits, siege loss, rooted endurance, speech and conduct outcomes, idolatrous abundance, sacrificial rejection, and promised restoration.
Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth vegetation: seed-bearing plants and fruit trees, each bearing fruit with seed according to its kind.” And it was so.
Fruit-bearing trees appear through God's creative word, and seed within the fruit serves the ordered continuation of created life.
The earth produced vegetation: seed-bearing plants according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
The earth's fruit according to kind is declared good, grounding fruitfulness in creation before later moral metaphors develop.
Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit contains seed. They will be yours for food.
God gives seed-bearing plants and fruit trees for food, presenting produce as provision rather than private spiritual achievement.
Jacob became angry with Rachel and said, “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld children from you?”
Jacob recognizes that he cannot take God's place in Rachel's infertility, even as his anger fails to meet her grief with tenderness.
He will love you and bless you and multiply you. He will bless the fruit of your womb and the produce of your land—your grain, new wine, and oil, the young of your herds and the lambs of your flocks—in the land that He swore to your fathers to give you.
Covenant blessing embraces womb, field, and flock, locating Israel's life in God's promised land and sworn commitment.
You are to take some of the firstfruits of all your produce from the soil of the land that the Lord your God is giving you and put them in a basket. Then go to the place the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for His Name,
The worshiper brings the first portion of the land's produce, joining harvest, memory, confession, and gratitude before the Lord.
And now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land that You, O Lord, have given me.” Then you are to place the basket before the Lord your God and bow down before Him.
The presented firstfruits are confessed as produce from land the Lord has given, resisting the illusion of self-created abundance.
The fruit of your womb will be cursed, as well as the produce of your land, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks.
The curse reverses womb and land blessing within the covenant sanctions, not as a universal formula for diagnosing individual suffering.
A people you do not know will eat the produce of your land and of all your toil. All your days you will be oppressed and crushed.
Foreign consumption of Israel's produce is joined to oppression and crushing, revealing the social violence of losing a harvest to domination.
Then you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you.
Siege reduces the covenant people to an appalling violation of family life, presenting horror and judgment rather than permitted conduct.
And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah will again take root below and bear fruit above.
The surviving remnant roots below and bears above, picturing renewed stability and life after imperial threat.
He is like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding its fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither, and who prospers in all he does.
Fruit comes in season from a tree rooted by water, joining faithful meditation to steady life without promising freedom from every hardship.
Children are indeed a heritage from the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward.
Children are received as the Lord's heritage and reward, language of gift that must never make fertility a demand or childlessness a disgrace.
The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise.
The righteous person's fruit is life-giving, tying wisdom to an influence that nourishes rather than exploits others.
By fruitful speech a man is filled with good things, and the work of his hands returns to him.
Speech bears consequences that can fill a person with good, while the verse also keeps embodied work and its return in view.
From the fruit of his lips a man enjoys good things, but the desire of the faithless is violence.
The fruit of lips is contrasted with violent desire, so verbal outcomes remain morally accountable to what the speaker seeks.
Tell the righteous it will be well with them, for they will enjoy the fruit of their labor.
The righteous enjoy the fruit of their labor within an oracle that exposes social injustice and announces accountable outcomes.
He is like a tree planted by the waters that sends out its roots toward the stream. It does not fear when the heat comes, and its leaves are always green. It does not worry in a year of drought, nor does it cease to produce fruit.
The water-rooted tree remains green and fruitful through heat and drought, illustrating trust that endures severe conditions.
Israel was a luxuriant vine, yielding fruit for himself. The more his fruit increased, the more he increased the altars. The better his land produced, the better he made the sacred pillars.
Israel's increasing fruit funds increasing altars, proving that abundance can deepen idolatry rather than certify faithfulness.
You have plowed wickedness and reaped injustice; you have eaten the fruit of lies. Because you have trusted in your own way and in the multitude of your mighty men,
A cultivated pattern of wickedness yields injustice and lies, using harvest language to expose chosen moral consequences.
Would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
The prophet's escalating questions reject the idea that even a firstborn could purchase pardon, preparing for justice, mercy, and humble walking with God.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Fruit moves from literal harvest yield to figurative reward or consequence of action, especially moral outcome
Fruit moves from literal harvest yield to figurative reward or consequence of action, especially moral outcome
fruit (literally or figuratively) BDB: fruit Usage: bough, (first-)fruit(-ful), reward.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 119 lexical occurrence verses.
פְּרִי is built from this root:
Yahweh is source of covenant fruitfulness.Hosea 14:4-8
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
H6529 joins source and outcome while repeatedly resisting easy equations. Creation bears fruit because God orders and provides life. Israel receives crops, herds, and children as covenant gifts, yet the same word appears in devastating curse and siege passages that expose the cost of rebellion and domination. Wisdom can call speech or righteousness fruitful, while Hosea shows prosperity redirected toward idols and lies.
The rooted trees of Psalms and Jeremiah bear in season and remain alive through drought, which commends durable trust rather than constant visible success. Pastors should therefore ask what process, relationship, or allegiance an outcome discloses over time, while refusing to call every loss divine punishment. Infertility, miscarriage, disability, poverty, illness, and a ministry's small size do not prove defective faith.
Fruit language should deepen gratitude, patience, repentance, and care for vulnerable people, not create a scoreboard that rewards appearance and blames sufferers.
Gen.1.11
H6529 is a masculine noun used for literal fruit and produce, offspring as fruit of the womb, and figurative results such as the fruit of speech, labor, righteousness, or lies. Construct forms frequently link the fruit to its source.
The New Testament continues fruit language for repentance, character, teaching, generosity, worship, mission, and life in Christ. Those developments preserve the Old Testament distinction between created produce, moral outcome, covenant judgment, and God-given growth rather than turning fruit into a single success metric.